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In Each Other We TrustPrinting Our Own MoneyBy King CollinsImagine this: You are about to pay for a breakfast at your favorite cafe. You open your wallet and find, not just one, but two kinds of money. No, you're not in a foreign country. You're in Ukiah. There's the familiar U.S. dollar and there's that other bill. It feels like money. It looks like money. But it is measured in hours, "Ukiah Hours." Your breakfast costs $5.50, so you hand the cashier a 1/2 HOUR note valued at $5, and two U.S. quarters. Afterwards you feel a tinge of pride and exhilaration knowing that you have not only provided for your own needs, but also strengthened the local economy. Unlike the federal dollar, which drifts quickly out of the area, the Ukiah Hour will circulate only in your community, and in doing so it will be exchanged over and over again to provide valuable goods and services as well as employment for your neighbors. Larry Sheehy discovers the Ithaca Hour If this scenario is really going to happen it will be due, in large part, to the efforts of Larry Sheehy, a longtime advocate of community economic development. Sheehy had thought about local currency before, but he says, "The first time I really got interested in the idea of printing our own money was a couple of years ago at a slide show sponsored by the Environmental Center." The slide show featured Paul Glover and the Ithaca Hour. "I was impressed with how well the local currency actually worked in Ithaca," says Sheehy, "and I was impressed with Paul Glover's knowledge of community economics." Paul Glover is the founder of the Ithaca currency and has become the most prominent and accessible figure in the growing movement. Glover's thoroughness in documenting the seven year progress of the Ithaca experiment and his willingness to provide expertise and other kinds of support make it relatively easy for anyone to issue a local currency. The two key elements of a successful currency, according to Glover's model, are 1) the money (the bills) which must be designed and printed, and 2) a newspaper in which participating businesses and individuals list their goods and services. Rapid growth of local money Thanks in part to Glover, new currencies have been springing up all over the United States. Five years ago, there were only a handful of local currencies in the United States. Since then, the Ithaca model has been replicated in more than 60 communities in this country and there are many more in Canada and other parts of the world. In the last few months major newspapers have had articles on local currency. For example, The New York Times recently carried an article titled "A Small Connecticut Town Issues Its Own Currency." The image on the lavender notes wasn't a portrait of George Washington, or even Thomas Jefferson, but an engraving of a covered wagon and three pioneers (and) the bills' motto declared not 'In God We Trust' but 'In Community We Trust.' 'It's real money in this town,' explained Wollner, who runs her restaurant, the Willimantic Brewing Company .... 'It's worth 10 real dollars. And we take it for 100 percent of a bill.' Thomas Greco: taking the mystery out of the economy About a year ago another money mentor, Thomas Greco, visited Ukiah to promote his new book, New Money for Healthy Communities. He was interviewed on Radio Curious (KZYXandZ) and was featured in an article in the Ukiah Daily Journal. The radio show and the article in the Journal attracted a few more people to the idea, including a local business owner who contacted Sheehy and offered to help him get Ukiah Hours off the ground. Greco maintains that there is an educational value to participating in local currency: By creating money and using it ourselves-by customizing money to fit our needs-we begin to understand what it is and how it works. We experience it differently. Instead of money being the ruler of our human condition, we use it to liberate ourselves. In a word, we demystify it. Start-up group Sheehy says, "We decided to jump-start the process with a small group-a steering committee. That group is taking the first steps to initiate the project." Once the basics are established, the steering committee plans to reach out with barter potlucks and town hall type meetings. In this way, according to Sheehy, they will establish a democratic process, a way for members of Ukiah Hours "...to participate in the governance of the program." Ukiah Hours has set-up an office in Ukiah and is currently completing the design work for the prototype currency. The committee will soon be signing up members to be included in the Hour Town Ukiah, the trading list newspaper, and plan to have their first Barter Pot-Luck sometime this fall. (If you are interested in participating or would like more information, call Larry at 468-5538 (email: greenmac@pacific.net). Another local currency called SEED (Self Sufficient Economic Development) is developing on the Mendocino coast. They can be reached at 937-4412 or 937-4077. The Real Agenda In truth, this article is more about eco-nomic development than anything else. Economic development, now there's a term that is guaranteed to put a bunch of people to sleep, and for good reason. After all, when has economic development done anything good for you and me? Yes, the economy is getting bigger and bigger. But what about us? We're working (or worrying about working) most of the time just to survive. Like, never mind universal health insurance, that's just a dream-because of, you know, the economy. Yeah, the economy that is doing so well is the same economy that won't support health insurance for you and me. That's interesting, isn't it? Anyway, we, the sleepy ones, are beginning to realize that maybe it's the economy itself that makes us drowsy. Pardon the noxious analogy, but it's like we're in a big garage (the world) and we left the economy running. We're beginning to understand that this thing we call the economy may be running just fine long after we're all asphyxiated. Let's just say that one way or another we are going to have to wake up. Of course we're talking about a whole society waking up, and society doesn't wake up all at once. We are also talking about Northern California. We're talking about Ukiah. We're talking about what we can do to get a better life for ourselves right here in our region and in our town. We are talking about an economic theory and practice (pardon the scientific terms, but they are necessary) that openly and effectively supports and creates human social organization based on mutual aid and mutual benefit. To be more specific, Ukiah Hours are about a particular tool of community economic development. The tool is a local currency based on productive time rather than the abstract, misunderstood greenback. OK, that's enough socioeconomic theory for today. I know we left some crucial concepts undefined. Like, what is sustainable economic development? We'll get to that later. * * * About the author: King Collins is the owner of Green Mac Desktop Publishing, Ukiah's first digital graphic design company and an instructor of computer science and desktop publishing. He can be reached at (707) 462-4543, or: web: www.greenmac.com/hours email: greenmac@pacific.net LOCAL CURRENCY RESOURCESThomas H. Greco on Money and Local Currency, A Radio Curious Interview/Audiocassette, $7 Pre-paid orders from: Barry Vogel, Box 7, Ukiah, CA 95482. Contact Barry at 462-2793. A critique of the global financial system and discussion of local currencies as a tool for community economic developement.. New Money for Healthy Communities and Debt: A Solution to the Global Crisis, Both by Thomas H. Greco, 1994, $19 and 1992, $11 respectively, post-paid order from: Community Information Resource Center. P.O. Box 42663, Tucson, AZ 85733. Phone: (520) 577-2187 Ithaca HOURS (Paul Glover) One of the first local currency projects. Web site lists local systems around the world. Send $25 for Hometown Money Starter Kit; and $15 for 20 min. video, "HOUR Town." Northern CA Local Currency Projects: Ukiah HOURS (Potter Valley to Hopland), "HOUR Town Ukiah" (Newspaper and Trading List) S.E.E.D. Our Community Cash (Sonoma Co./Santa Rosa) (Mateel Watershed) (Eureka Area) Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1998 Return to the Ukiah HOURS Home Page |
